Daily archives for October 22nd, 2012

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again with another of our “guess the famous wedded couple” reader challenges.

Last week’s couple, Ann Sothern and Robert Sterling, met at MGM where he was a contract player and she a second string star. But today’s newlyweds were probably even more famous at the time, and generated more gossip.

This woman was a Big Star, who was lauded as the “Queen of British Cinema” before taking on Hollywood.

And our handsome leading man, who’d become a model, hadn’t acted before. And after two films with his wife he disappeared from Hollywood to join the Marines. Given this career disparity, it’s ironic that today’s reader is far more likely to identify the topless husband above rather than the gorgeous, impeccably glamorous wife.

Ok, some hints:

— She was, shall we say, closely linked to costar Robert Donat in the 1935 edition of The 39 Steps.

— He came from Montclair, New Jersey, and was far more interested in sailing than acting.

— She was so successful in both her native England and later in Hollywood that she commanded big sums in the midst of the Great Depression. Her salary in 1938? A reported $250,000, and absolute fortune at the time.

— Despite her huge success, she interrupted her acting career to serve as a Red Cross nurse during World War II.

— He is probably best remembered for films he made for directors Stanley Kubrick,John Huston and Francis Coppola.

— He was 10 years younger than she was, and much to Hollywood’s amusement, stirred distinctly unladylike impulses in her when they first met. Their affair generated gossip at the time, culminating in their official union in 1942. It lasted four years.

— She was his first wife. He was her second husband.

— She married a total of four times. Her last husband was a wealthy and powerful publishing bigwig with Time Inc.